Envisat : His missions and photos
Credit : ESA
Number of photos : 80
You can view the complete gallery by clicking here (372 photos)
About the ENVISAT satellite
ENVISAT (for ENVIronment SATellite) is an Earth observation satellite of the European Space Agency. It was launched in March 2002 and ended its mission in May 2012. It is since then a space debris.
ENVISAT’s mission was to collect environmental data on our planet (oceans, land, ice and atmosphere). These data were used to create climate models, monitor the Earth’s renewable and non-renewable resources and study the structure and dynamics of the planet and its crust. In order to achieve these tasks, it embarks 10 different instruments (radars, spectrometers, radiometers,…). All the pictures you see in this article have been taken by one of these 10 instruments : MERIS (Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer). This instrument is composed of 5 cameras placed side by side.
On April 8, 2012, the contact with ENVISAT was lost and no explanation has been found so far. It was photographed on April 15 by the Pleiade satellite but no visible problem is detected. It remains to this day the largest space debris in orbit around the Earth.
Analysis and explanation of some photos
Let’s take the time to review a few photos to understand a little more what we see on some of them.
Sources :
_Wikipedia : ENVISAT
_ESA : ESA declares end of mission for Envisat
_ESA : ENVISAT photos gallery
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